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Elena Poniatowska
Elena Poniatowska About this sound audio (help·info) (May 19, 1932, Paris, France) is a French-born Mexican journalist and author, specializing in works on social and political issues focused on those considered to be disenfranchised especially women and the poor. She was born in Paris to upper class parents, including her mother whose family fled Mexico during the Mexican Revolution. She left France for Mexico when she was ten to escape the Second World War. When she was eighteen and without a university education, she began writing for the newspaper Excélsior, doing interviews and society columns. Despite the lack of opportunity for women from the 1950s to the 1970s, she evolved to writing about social and political issues in newspapers, books in both fiction and nonfiction form. Her best known work is La noche de Tlatelolco (The night of Tlatelolco, the English translation was titled "Massacre in Mexico") about the repression of the 1968 student protests in Mexico City. She is considered to be “Mexico's grande dame of letters” and is still an active writer. Her father was Polish-French, Jean Joseph Évremond Sperry Poniatowski, born to a family distantly related to the last king of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Stanisław August Poniatowski. Her mother was France-born heiress María Dolores Paulette Amor Yturbe, whose Mexican family lost land and fled Mexico after the ouster of Porfirio Díaz during the Mexican Revolution. Poniatowska's extended family includes an archbishop, the primate of Poland, a musician, several writers and statesmen including Benjamin Franklin. Her aunt was the poet Pita Amor. She was raised in France by a grandfather who was a writer and a grandmother who would show her negative photos about Mexico, including photographs in National Geographic depicting Africans, saying they were Mexican indigenes, and scaring her and her siblings with stories about cannibalism there. Although she maintained a close relationship with her mother until her death, the mother was unhappy about her daughter being labeled a "communist" and refused to read Poniatowska's novel about political activist Tina Modotti. The Second World War broke out in Europe when Poniatowska was a child. The family left Paris when she was nine, going first to the south of the country. When the deprivations of the war became too much and the southern part of France, the Zone libre, was invaded by Germany and Italy in 1942, the family left France entirely for Mexico when she was ten years old. Her father remained in France to fight, participating later in D-Day in Normandy. She began her education in France at Vouvray on the Loire. After arriving to Mexico, she continued at the Liceo Franco-Mexicano, then at Eden Hall and high school at the Sacred Heart Covent in the late 1940s. In 1953, she returned to Mexico, where she learned to type, but she never went to university. Instead, she began working at the Excélsior newspaper. Poniatowska has published novels, non-fiction books, journalistic essays, and many forwards and prologues to books on Mexican artists. Much of her writing has focused on social and human rights issues, especially those related to women and the poor. She began her writing career in 1953 at 21 years of age with the newspaper Excélsior and the next year with a publication called Novedades de México, both of which she still occasionally writes for. Her first writing assignments consisted of interviews of famous people and society columns related to Mexico's upper class. Her first published interview was with the ambassador of the United States. She stated that she began "like a donkey" knowing nothing and learning on the job. She was first published under her French name of Hélene but later changed it to Elena, or sometimes using Anel. Poniatowski published her first book in 1954, called Lilus Kikus and since then her career has been a mix of journalism and creative writing. Despite that the years from the 1950s and 1970s offered limited opportunities for women, she eventually moved from interviews and society stories into literary profiles and stories about social issues. She emerged as a subtly present female voice in a patriarchal society even though she was referred to as "Elenita" (little Elena) and her work often dismissed as naïve interviews and “children's” literature. She progressed by persistence rather than by direct confrontation. Poniatowska most influential work has been “testimonial narratives,” writings based both on historical facts and accounts by people who normally are not recorded by the media. She began writing on social issues after a visit to Lecumberri, a famous former prison, to interview several incarcerated railway workers who had gone on strike. She found prisoners eager to talk and share their life stories. She interviewed Subcomandante Marcos in 1994. Much of this work has been compiled into seven volumes including Todo México (1991–1999), Domingo siete (1982) and Palabras cruzadas (1961). Her best known book of this type is La noche de Tlatelolco which contains the testimonies of the victims of the 1968 student massacre in Mexico City. She is one of the founders of La Jornada newspaper, Fem, a feminist magazine, Siglo XXI a publishing house and the Cineteca Nacional, the national film institute. She has also published biographies, of the Nobel laureate Octavio Paz and artist Juan Soriano. Today, Poniatowska is considered to be Mexico's "grande dame" of letters but she has not been recognized around the world like other prolific Latin American writers of her generation. She has also not been fully integrated among Mexico's elite, never receiving diplomatic appointments, like Carlos Fuentes, and turning down political opportunities nor has she spent much time in the elite literary circles in Mexico. Fuentes commented on this once that she was too busy in the city's slums or shopping for groceries to have time for him and others. Although she admits such comments are said in jest, she contends that it shows that they consider her more of a maid, a cook or even a janitor in the “great House of Mexican Literature.” For over thirty years, she has taught a weekly writing workshop. Through this and other efforts, she has influence a generation of Mexican writers including Silvia Molina and Rosa Nissán. Category:Actors from France